VIDEO: Twin-Turbo Lamborghini Gallardo goes Airborne at Texas Mile

The Texas Mile had its inaugural event back in October 2003 and since then it has become very popular among performance enthusiasts. There you can drive on a one and a half mile highway section as fast as you can and not be in trouble in the eyes of the law. Oh, and you can set some records. Just what the owner of this twin-turbo Lamborghini Gallardo intended, but things went horribly wrong for him as you can see in the video after the break.

Richard Holt's rocket-on-wheels was built by Underground Racing with the twin-turbocharged V10 rated somewhere between 1,500-1,900 hp (1,119-1,417 kW). More than enough to attempt setting a new standing mile world record.

Eyewitness reports say that the car hit the 1 mile marker with no trouble, immediately deploying its parachute. At that moment it suddenly veered off to the right and, after hitting the grass and a small obstacle, took to the skies going well over 100 mph or 160 km/h.

The reason? Strong crosswinds, it seems. Fortunately, Mr. Holt was able to walk away from this one, the only real victim being the car.

By Csaba Daradics

Source: Autoblog.com & Autoblog.nl

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225 lb Mother Killed in Crash, Peugeot Admits Not Crash Testing for Heavier Drivers

On the 20th of January, 2009, 56-year-old mother-of-three Judith Evans was killed when her Peugeot 107 hit a Vauxhall Vectra in a head-on collision in Buckinghamshire, UK. The matter recently went to court where it was heard that the victim sustained multiple fractures and chest and abdominal injuries which the Thames Valley Police noticed were unusually severe given the force of impact.

Experts from Peugeot and Vehicle Safety Consultancy Ltd believe that the 107 should have provided good protection for this sort of crash, and yet this was not the case. Why?

Evans' Peugeot 107 met all EuroNCAP safety standards, with the 107 and it's Citroen C1 and Toyota Aygo siblings having scored four stars in a 2005 test. It was fitted with front seatbelt pre-tensioners and load limiters along with front and side body airbags for both driver and passenger.

The investigation suggests it may have to do with weight. Not the weight of the Vectra compared to the 107, as Peugeot has suggested, but the weight of the 107's driver.

You see, Mrs Evans weighed close to 16 stone (102 kg / 225 U.S. lbs). Meanwhile Peugeot, following European regulations, never tested the 107 with a dummy weighing more than 12 stone 14 lbs (78 kg / 172 U.S. lbs). As such, the safety features built into the 107 weren't calibrated for a heavier occupant.

The Evans's family lawyer, asked Peugeot safety expert Richard Zeitouni: "Have you tested with any dummies more than 78kg?" Mr Zeitouni, replied that Peugeot had not.

Mr Horner then asked: "So you have not tested with a weight of dummy that corresponds to 50% of the male population?"

Mr Zeitouni answered: "When we designed this car we found it was good, adequate protection for the majority of occupants. It's an official dummy, a regulation dummy."

Peter Gloyns, a mechanical engineer from Vehicle Safety Consultancy (VSC) Ltd made this comment:

"The accident raises a serious question over the stability of the response of the total restraint system for an occupant of this build and weight in an accident of this severity in which it would be hoped that good protection could be offered."

The driver of the Vectra sustained fractures in her kneecap and internal bruising, but was otherwise unharmed in the crash.

A spokesperson from Peugeot told UK daily 'The Independent' that the company had no comment to make at this stage.

We'll have more on this case as we get it.

By Tristan Hankins

Source: Independent

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VIDEO: Chinese Biker Survives Accident thanks to some Crazy Kung Fu-Like Moves

Talk about lucky; here's a video of a Chinese motorcyclists who seemed to have all the right moves when he slammed into a little carry-all truck. As you can see from the clip after the jump, he was either extremely skilled or extremely lucky to be thrown off his ride the way he was.

If this accident weren't captured on CCTV, it would be the kind of stunt I'd expect to see in some 90's Jackie Chan movie. In that case, however, there would be people swarming the guy and dude would be using the formerly-known-as-a-motorcycle debris to whoop evildoers' behinds instead of probably being in shock. Hey, at least one or two of the surrounding drivers stopped to lend a hand.

Any (I'm guessing) Mandarin speakers out there, feel free to throw us a translation of the text in the comments below.

By Phil Alex

Via: Gizmodo / Jalopnik

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Lambo Fought the Lights and the Lights Won

Pop quiz, hot shot: what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? Answer: This.

The irresistible force: a silver-colored Lamborghini Gallardo tearing down the strip. The immovable object: a traffic light pole in Laval, Quebec. The result: well, you can see for yourself.

We don't much about physics, but we know that a) energy is never created nor destroyed, merely transformed and b) expensive supercar / wet road + stationary object = gold photo opportunity.

Our guess is that the Lamborghini will need a new front bumper, and given how much parts and service on those things cost, it might be cheaper to buy a new Chevy Malibu.

So here's a Top Tip; If you are driving a quarter of a million dollar supercar down a wet road and the lights turn yellow, apply brake pressure slowly and evenly. Otherwise you may skid, and in a 500+ horsepower supercar on a wet road, things like traction control won't do diddly-squat...

By Tristan Hankins

Source: Montrealracing

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We're Goin' Surfin': Rental Corvette Abandoned in Pacific Ocean [With Videos]

Some presumably drunk people out California way decided to have a little bit too much fun in their recently-rented Corvette and ended up parked in salt water halfway up the car's doors. Thankfully in this day and age everyone has some sort of video recording device within arm's reach, so we have some post-parking-surfing videos below.

The story goes something like this: between two and four people - who may or may not have been racing - decided to roll on down to the end of Law Street (seriously) and take the normally pavement-pounding Corvette out to play in the sand. Once actually on the beach, the driver proceeded to do a few donuts, calmly drive the car into the water, and flee the scene.

The report indicates that some people who were involved have been detained, and that at least some of the expenses involved in pulling the car out of the sand could be recouped. All I can say for certain is that puling a car out of wet sand and water must have been hard as hell due to the suction; I learned that lesson when my friend took his Grand Marquis four-wheeling and the night ended...let's say poorly.

By Phil Alex

Source: CBS8

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Bumblebee Camaro Crashes into Real Cop Car During Filming of Transformers 3

BUMBLEBEE is racing down a side street to catch up with the other AUTOBOTS, who have found another piece of the ALLSPARK. Suddenly, a DECEPTICON POLICE SUV appears and cuts BUMBLBEE off!

Well, not really, but it sure looks like that in this video. According to The Washington Post, the story goes that a Metropolitan Police SUV was on its way to investigate a suspicious package in the D.C. area when it strayed onto the Transformers 3 set.

Just at that moment, a yellow Chevrolet Camaro a.k.a. "Bumblebee" rounded a corner and slammed into the right side of the police vehicle in the sort of scene you previously would only have seen in a Michael Bay movie.

District Police spokeswoman Tisha Gant told The New York Times that the officer driving the SUV was taken to a local hospital and that the driver of the Camaro was uninjured.

The Camaro seems to be the worst off of the two, having sustained damage to its front end up to the wheel wells. All of us here at Carscoop are hoping and praying that Bumblebee will be okay...

By Tristan Hankins

Via: The Washington Post

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US Trying to Perfect its Safety Rating System; Can't we Just Meet EU Standards and Call it a Day?

US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has announced a new and improved 5-star safety rating system for 2011 vehicles. If you're interested about your new car, scroll on down for some of the vehicles tested. As of now, the BMW 5-Series (RWD) and Hyundai Sonata are the only vehicles to be top-rated (33 of the 55 models to be tested have been graded thus far).

The NHTSA says the new protocols will also test "side-pole" accidents and crash-prevention systems, as well as using new dummies (hopefully these will be set up properly). One new addition will be the use of a smaller "female" dummy to gauge accidents involving women. Also, new "injury criteria" will be implemented, as well as the use of an Overall Vehicle Score.

NHTSA Administrator David Strickland says, "We want consumers to embrace these new safety technologies as a way to make vehicles safer. We believe electronic stability control, lane departure warning, and forward collision warning offer significant safety benefits and consumers should consider them when buying a new car." Well, yeah.

By Phil Alex

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Desert Drifting a Sonata: Knowing When to Stop is a Sign of Wisdom...

What happens when you live in / near the desert and have a bunch of money to waste? Cars get destroyed, that's what. Here's a small clip of somebody taking their Hyundai Sonata out for a little slideways action and utterly shredding the rear passenger side. I'd venture to say it's totaled, considering the rear wheels aren't meant to be pushed up into the wheel well like that.

Also, how fast do you have to be going to launch the spare tire out of the trunk? If anyone knows what event this was or what specifically was going on (other than putting that poor white Sonata into a mound of dirt), give us a shout.

By Phil Alex

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FAIL No2: Volvo V60 Safety System Flub Ends with a Dead Dummy Named Bob

This is officially the second safety system demonstration in as many "Look at this!" announcements that has gone horribly wrong for Volvo. That's right, two. The first one was back in May and led to a new S60 estate crushing itself into the back of a truck - see the video here. This latest mishap occurred during a media demonstration to Australian journalists in Europe.

Now that the known-as-safe Volvo brand is officially owned by the Chinese, is this a sign of things to come?

The mechanism in question is part of Volvo's pedestrian avoidance technology, which makes use of cameras and radar in the nose of the vehicle to control the brakes and stability control system in order to reduce driver/pedestrian injuries. The object that the system was meant to detect was Bob the Dummy; as you can see in the vids below, it didn't detect a damn thing.

That's not to say the system is terrible; after all is said and done, it worked 75% of the time. Of the twelve runs, only one ended with Bob getting the full force of the Volvo unleashed on him, with the other two still being less than perfect. Some of the blame has been placed on a camera that doesn't work well in low-light conditions (infrared / night vision, guys?).

Volvo's Jonas Tisell, Active Safety Systems manager, told journalists, "The failure of the test was due to the dummy not being set up properly, therefore it did not give an echo enough for the system. So the dummy was not relevant in this situation." So...blame it on the dummy? And "not relevant"? How does being to blame (according to Volvo) translate as irrelevant?

More like Volvo just got caught with its pants down...again.

By Phil Alex

Via: Drive and Autoblog.com

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Segway Company Owner Dies After Riding Two-Wheeler Off a Cliff...

British tycoon and owner of the Segway company, Jimi Heseldon, has died after reportedly driving one of the firm's motorized two-wheelers off a cliff and into a river near his estate in Thorp Arch, Boston Spa, West Yorkshire, on Sunday, according to news reports.

"Police were called at 11.40am yesterday to reports of a man in the River Wharfe, apparently having fallen from the cliffs above," a spokesman for West Yorkshire Police force told reporters.

"A Segway-style vehicle was recovered. He was pronounced dead at the scene. At this time we do not believe the death to be suspicious."

The 62-year-old businessman, whose personal fortune was worth £166million earning him 395th place on this year's Sunday Times Rich List, brought the Segway from its U.S. inventor Dean Kamen in January 2010.

Source: Daily Mail / AP

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FAIL: Toyota Land Cruiser vs Puddle [Accident Content]

Nothing brings you back to driving-reality quite as effectively as good a ol' cold shower, or in this case, a puddle bath. The sinkhole incident involving this new Toyota Land Cruiser Prado reportedly happened during a test-drive event organized by a Prado fan club (we're assuming it occurred somewhere in Russia). Photos and a video of the accident after the break.

Spasiba to Alex V. for the tip!

Via: Carlifeblog , Source: Prado-club

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BP Ultimate 1, Ultimate Driving Machine 0; Porsche 911 GT3 Crashes into Gas Pump

The Porsche GT3 RS is widely accepted to be one of the best handling performance cars on the road today. So how is it that this driver managed to slam it into the petrol pump at a BP service station?

In any case, you only have to type, "car + petrol station" into YouTube to see just how lucky this guy was... Sure, the repairs will no doubt cost more than a well-equipped Toyota Corolla but at least he wasn't burnt alive.

We gather this accident happened in England because of the blue-and-yellow-marked Police Mitsubishi (Shogun?) parked in the background, but that's about all the information we have.

We would have contacted BP for a statement, but we assumed they were busier with some...ahem...other, little accident...

By Tristan Hankins

Via: Autoblog.nl & Jalopnik , Photos: Quattroworld

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Flame on! Fifth Tata Nano Bursts into Flames...

Another Nano, the fifth from since 2009, has gone up in smoke, this time in Gujarat, western India. For reference, the last one toasted itself in Mumbai in late March, 2010. According to Business Week, an email from Tata states that "the car belonged to the company and has no design flaw."

Bursting into flames due to "faulty switches that caused smoke and plastic parts to melt" seems like a possible design flaw to me.

As for an update regarding Tata's Mumbai victim (Tata still can't determine the cause of the fire), Satish Purshotam Sawant wants some compensation for putting him and his family in danger...in the form of Rs 15 lakhs (1,500,000 Rupees or ~$33,700 US) and a Fiat Punto. Tata says no dice: it's either a new Nano or a full refund.

In response, Sawant has filed a First Information Report with local authorities.

"It's been ten days and there's been no response from Tata Motors or Concorde [the dealer where Sawant purchased the car]. I've read in the newspapers that [Tata spokesman] Debasis Ray says technical investigations are on. Isn't it Tata Motors' responsibility to give details of the investigation?"

Yes, yes it is.

We'll see how this plays out.

By Phil Alex

Via: Businessweek and Moneycontrol

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One Hell of a Fender Bender: Pagani Zonda S Crash Turns $445,000 Repair Bill

Fans of Pagani's Zonda (that is, everyone) may want to turn away. In what could only be called a crime against nature, this Pagani Zonda S is said to have hit spun out and gotten intimate with a pole. That's what you call an "Oh sh!t" moment.

The result: one of the largest insurance claims filed for a privately-owned car in the UK (at £300,000 / ~$445,000), according to insurer Aviva.

Also, it's been said that the person behind the wheel was taking it for a test drive and that the owner was riding shotgun...

The driver ended up filing the claim, and...IT WAS SIR JACKIE STEWART! That is, unless Sir Jackie's spokesman is telling the truth, in which case, that's egg on my face. Here's what he said: "Sir Jackie wasn't in the country. He's never driven the car and doesn't know the owner."

Regardless, the Zonda's been sent to Modena for repairs. Fair enough; I wouldn't want to get rid of my baby, either, write-off or not.

I wonder how having a former F1 World Champion affects resale value? Mr. Schumacher, would you be interested in totaling a '99 Chrysler in the near future?

- By Phil Alex

Via: BBC 1 & BBC 2

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Ferrari California Rear-Ends BMW 5-Series

In other case, this fender-bender would be just another accident, but since it concerns a new Ferrari California it obviously caught our attention. The only thing we know about the incident is that the California rear-ended a BMW 5-Series and that its owner will definitely pay a hefty price to repair the Italian coupe-convertible. High-res pics after the jump.

Via: Autogespot

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Feds Say Toyota Prius Driver at Fault in New York Accident

According to U.S. safety officials, last week's highly publicized Toyota Prius accident in Harrison, New York, that was investigated as a possible case of unintended acceleration was most likely caused by the driver. The Prius owner had had blamed the crash on the vehicle, saying it wouldn't stop.

"'Information retrieved from the vehicle's onboard computer systems indicated there was no application of the brakes and the throttle was fully open," NHTSA said on Thursday in a statement about the New York accident.

The problem: All these greedy, misguided, or careless hacks are helping Toyota appear as a good guy, when in fact Toyota needs to get its act together and figure out the source of their cars' unintended acceleration.

The lesson: Don't fake an accident in a vehicle that has a tattle-tale computer. Buy a classic for fraud like that.

- By Phil Alex

Via: Detroit News

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Million Dollar Plus Pagani Zonda F Crashes Into Parked Cars in Hong Kong

In any other case, a car crashing into some parked vehicles would be just another accident that would most likely have gone by unnoticed. However, when the vehicle involved in the crash is a million dollar plus Pagani Zonda F of which only 25 have been built, the incident is sure to capture our attention. We don't have many details on the crash other than it happened somewhere in Hong Kong, but feel free to check out the pictures after the jump.

Source: Orientdaily , Via: Wreckedexotics

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Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 Italian Police Car Crashes Into Parked Vehicles

Only a year after joining the ranks of the Italian State Police, and the world famous Lamborghini LP560-4 Polizia has been totaled in a weird crash that occurred near Cremona this past weekend. Italy's Corriere Della Sera newspaper reported that the police officer in the 560-horsepower 'Raging Bull' supercar was allegedly cruising on the road when a vehicle pulled out all of a sudden from of a petrol station.

In order to avoid a head-on collision, the police officer swerved and crashed into a couple of parked cars. As you can see in the photo shots in the video below, the Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 ended up, or rather under a Mercedes-Benz A-Class...

The newspaper said that the police officers in the driver and passenger seat of the Lamborghini were slightly injured.

Sources: Corriere Della Sera, The Guardian and Youreporter, Via: Autoblog.it

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